It's Called The Accretion Disc
by TerryJ
Summary: In Singularity how come Carter is unsurprised by O'Neill's knowledge of Astronomy? Not Ship


It was a warm quiet night on a quiet planet and Captain Samantha Carter was feeling fidgety.

The planet reminded her of Kansas with absolutely nothing scientifically fascinating to capture her attention. Daniel, however, was still seated in front of the half buried ruins they had found despite quickly encroaching darkness.

Sam sighed deeply as she sat on a nearby log with her legs drawn up to her chest and fiddling with the bunches of fabric creased around her knees. She had busied herself setting up camp and starting the campfire but now there was nothing left to set up and Teal'c was now calmly tending to the fire.

She glanced around, doing an automatic status check:

Perimeter? Check.

Gear? Check.

Weapons? Check.

Camp Site? Check.

Personnel?

Teal'c was by the fire.

Check.

She could make out the outline of Daniel hunched over his notebook still by the stones.

Check.

The Colonel...

Sam realized with a start that she didn't know where her CO was.

She was more than a little disturbed that she hadn't noticed his disappearance earlier but Teal'c surely would have been aware if something was wrong so Sam resisted the urge to go into panic mode.

"Teal'c," She started, trying to sound casual, "Did you see where the Colonel went off to?"

The large man gave a slight nod. "I do believe O'Neill walked toward the creek."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks."

Mollified that her Commanding Officer was not missing Sam sat for another few moments contemplating her next course of action. She began to think over the last couple of months and realized that Colonel did this often: every time they were on a peaceful planet and it wasn't raining, he would slink away from the camp only to return not acknowledging he had ever left.

Deciding there wasn't much to be doing here she decided to let her curiosity get the better of her and picked herself off the log and headed over toward where Teal'c had said he saw the Colonel.

She found him not far away in a clearing by the creek, away from the low bush like trees that dotted the area. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness away from the fire but she was soon able to make out the form of Jack O'Neill, kneeling on the ground, holding a sock around his flashlight and scribbling on a piece of paper.

She stepped closer trying to get a better look, "Sir, What are you doing?"

He looked up with an uncomfortable look on his face, like a little kid caught doing something that he wasn't sure was wrong or not.

"Ahm...nothing Carter...just mapping..."

Sam wasn't buying it. "Away from the fire, in the dark, on a planet with no topography?"

She heard, rather than saw, him clench his teeth. "Captain..." He warned.

Sam was surprised by his suddenly abrasive tone and decided curing her curiosity wasn't worth a court martial for pissing off the C.O. "Sorry sir. Didn't mean to pry sir. I'll be back at the camp sir."

As she turned to leave she heard the slap of his palm on the back of his neck. "Aww hell Carter. I didn't mean to snap...why don't you come here, you could actually help."

Intrigued again Sam knelt next to the Colonel and looked at the paper in his hand. If she was surprised to see a star map, she was shocked to see equations scrawled in various places across the paper.

"Sir...?"

O'Neill leaned back from his forward kneel and sat solidly on the ground next to her, letting out an exasperated sigh.

"Okay Carter, here's the deal...look...just...."

As Sam looked at the paper on the ground and listened to the Colonel's awkward, self-conscious stammering she would never have guessed this would be what she would come upon. The Colonel sighed again,

"Just...y'know...don't make fun or anything..."

"Sir?" She could not have been more confused than if he whipped out a grass skirt and started hula dancing.

He gesticulated between the paper and the sky, "I like astronomy. Always have on some level. Charlie really liked space so we bought a telescope and then after Abydos I really got into it. The thing is, one of the reasons I began to even notice the stars was because of their familiarity. I could be in Germany, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Korea...you name it...and I could look up and find at least something familiar. It was comforting. Now..." He waved his hand around indicating the planet and the horizon, "There is nothing familiar. It's a little unsettling...sometimes...kind of..."

The Colonel cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders before continuing in a much more factual tone. "Anyway, I've decided to try and make relational star charts, so if a star can be seen by both Earth and the planet than I can understand where it is in THIS sky as opposed to the sky back home...just like being in a different hemisphere...but more complicated..."

He glanced at Sam who continued to just sit there, seemingly a bit shell shocked so he continued to explain his project.

"So now I have this two dimensional map which I'm overlaying THIS planet's stars on and that's great but I need it to be conceptually 3 dimensional and 4 dimensional and I know I need calculus for that and I'm just struggling, I've tried getting away with just using trig but it's not working and since you're here, I figured, maybe you could help? I mean I think I have part of it but I have yet to be able to make sense of the rest here." He pointed to an integral equation on the right hand corner of the sheet.

Sam didn't know what to say or how to respond first so she said the first thing that came to her head, "4 dimensional?"

The Colonel gave her a look, as if surprised by her question and if she was honest she couldn't blame him, it was a dumb question from a certified genius, but she was still processing everything she had just learned about the Colonel.

"Ummmm Yes....? Speed of light? Vast distances? If we drastically alter our distance to a star it will appear differently so we need to measure it in a temporal dimension as well...for example, I'm pretty sure the big honkin blue giant up there is visible from Earth but if it IS the same star I think it is then from Earth it's viewed as a red dwarf."

He paused, looking at the sky, "That alone is really kind of amazing you know..."

Sam just stared at him, even as he pointed out the star in question. He looked back at her, holding her gaze for a long moment before he started fidgeting. Realizing that she was making him uncomfortable she decided to seek refuge in the familiar math scrawled upon the page.

"Um, okay, sure, that shouldn't be too much...can I borrow your pencil?"

He wordlessly handed the instrument over and held the flashlight while she worked. After 10 minutes she sat back, proudly presenting an equation.

"Sweet. This'll work. Thanks Carter, I've been working on this thing for 2 months."

Sam watched him as he eagerly held the paper and read and reread the equations on the sheet.

"So sir..." She started casually, trying to hide her desperate curiosity, "When did you learn calculus?"

He slowly lowered the sheet he had in his hand to look Sam in the eye. When he spoke his voice was gruff and his tone short, "In school."

He began folding the star chart and gathering his things but Sam wasn't satisfied, "In school? That's it? In school?"

He didn't look at her as he continued his gathering, "Yes Captain. In school. Is that so odd? Not all of us were born knowing advanced mathematics."

Registering the warning in his tone Sam took a calculated risk in continuing her prying. "I'm sorry sir. I didn't mean anything by it. It's just that before tonight...well, what I mean sir is...not to sound, well, you know...just..."

O'Neill sat back on his heels, beginning to be amused by the awkward fluttering of his usually unflappable 2IC.

"Just what, Carter? Come on, spit it out."

She looked at him, eyes wide, before the words tumbled from her lips, "Before tonight you've always seemed like the kind of person who doesn't know advanced mathematics at all!"

He continued to look at her with amusement in his features. He took a deep breath and a moment to think before he spoke, "Think about it Sam. I'm an officer in the Air Force, a pilot, of course I had to study math or else they'd never let me in a cockpit."

Sam cast her eyes down and bit her lip. She could feel the back of her neck flush with embarrassment. "Oh. I never really thought about it. I'm sorry, it's just you've always been..."

"Jovial? Charismatic? Handsome? Having Fun? Super awesome and cool? Suave? Decidedly NOT geeky?"

Sam smiled and shook her head, "Sure Sir. That's it."

Jack sighed and the groaned as he stood up, then extended a hand to help Sam to her feet, "Captain, don't worry- I'm not secretly hiding a huge level of intelligence here- You're still the ranking genius and I almost never understand anything either you or Daniel go on about. I wanted to fly so in school I learned just enough to understand thrust and propulsion and g-forces. All of this wormhole, teleportation, temporal distortion, alternate reality, molecular level type stuff just sounds like a bunch of gobbilty gook that I know I can just trust you to figure out."

Sam nodded slowly and they began walking back to the tents in companionable silence. They could see the light of the fire dancing in the darkness before she spoke again/

"Sir? "What else did you study in school? What was your degree in?"

She could sense him rolling his eyes at her question and she was slightly surprised when he gave her a straight answer, "Like I said, it was a paramilitary school so it wasn't normal college; You selected a track and then a focus and than specializations. I guess the focus would be like majoring in something and specializations were like minors."

Sam nodded, she had many friends and colleagues who had gone through similar programs. "So what were yours?"

"God, you're relentless," he sighed and smiled,

"My track was Air Force Leadership, focus was Battlefield Tactics and specializations were Aeronautics and Modern World Languages..."

Sam stopped where she stood. He stopped as well and watched as she looked at him, her face a mix of shock and concentration.

She resisted the urge to exclaim her surprise at his second specialization, instead she thought about it. She knew that almost everyone in those programs focused on battlefield tactics, if you wanted combat it was the most sensible choice, he already explained that aeronautics was because he wanted to be a pilot, also sensible....but modern world languages? She looked at him a long while when it finally came to her.

"You knew you wanted to do black ops..." She said quietly.

He smirked at her, "Not at first. It was suggested to me by one of my officers. He told me that learning a few languages would open a world of possibilities to do really cool things." He paused for a bit and squinted up at the sky "I was a dumb kid and didn't even realize what he was talking about..."

"Does Daniel know?" Sam asked.

"Nah. It's like the math thing. I didn't study linguistics. It was a series of excelerated courses in specific languages that are spoken in places a busy officer might find himself. I still have no idea what Daniel goes on about nor could I understand a language I've never heard before...that's all Space Monkey." O'Neill grimaced.

Sam thought for a moment. She smiled at him with amusement before speaking again, "I'm assuming that Russian and Spanish were a couple of those languages...?"

He looked at her with his head cocked to the side, trying to figure out what she was getting at. "Yeees..." He drawled out.

"So those times when Daniel is working with those languages you DO know what he's saying..." She kept talking, looking him straight in the eye.

"Mostly, kinda...." Jack was starting to not like the direction she was taking.

"So last week when he was talking with that Russian and you kept poking him in the arm and nagging him about what they were saying and making up nonsensical translations of the conversation? That was..."

She raised her eyebrow in an admirable Teal'c impression.

Jack straightened up and grinned broadly,"Just for fun!"

With that he turned heel and walked back to camp leaving a giggling Sam Carter to follow him.


End file.
